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Fountain of knowledge:Students maintain campus centerpiece

For three years,
mechanical engineering graduate student Chris
Meyer has combated such challenges as rust, lime, broken pipes,
crab apples, and powerful jets of water that send his glasses
flying.

It’s all in a day’s work for one of the
“keepers of the fountain,” as Meyer refers to the
members of Enlight, a small student organization interested in
computer and electronic technologies. Enlight members take care of
the iconic 18-foot-high sculpture, Máquina (Spanish for machine), on Engineering Mall.

Thanks to a gift in 2008 from
National Instruments, his job has gotten easier. National
Instruments donated a $9,000 CompactRIO programmable automation
controller that, when combined with the National Instruments
LabVIEW graphical programming language, allows Enlight members to
program the fountain to perform a variety of special effects.
“The fountain is a perfect application for what we do, and
we’re really excited about the different
possibilities,” says National Instruments Applications
Engineering Manager Casey Weltzin (BSECE ’06).
“The fountain is something everyone on campus is going to look at and learn from.”

The fountain was installed in the Engineering
Mall in 1999. Designed by St. Louis artist and UW-Madison alumnus
William Conrad Severson, Máquina is intended to be an
interactive experience with air and water in all forms.

Water shoots out of alternating valves on the fountain, then flows down
the base of the sculpture into a spillway that stretches to a pool
at the northern end. There, compressed air forces water and bubbles
up a 22-foot-high clear column; at its top, water runs out and
spills back into the pool.

Enlight adopted the fountain in 2003,
shortly after the organization’s formation. Though
maintaining it is not Enlight members’ sole focus, it is
their most time-intensive effort. Enlight members are making full
use of the fountain’s interactive potential. They have
programmed the infrared proximity sensors inside the stainless
steel poles in front of Máquina along Engineering Drive. The
sensors can change the pattern of the valves when the sensor is
covered by a hand. When activated, the bollards can trigger intense
jets of water or even shut the fountain off entirely.

To allow for
even more customization, Enlight members have installed a kiosk in
Engineering Hall that enables fountain-watchers to control the
individual valves via a liquid crystal display touchscreen. Viewers
can turn specific valves on and off to create original patterns in
the water.

In the future, group members plan to add additional
temperature and wind sensors to better determine when to turn on
the winter mist caps, which create columns of ice. They also have
discussed running light-emitting diode lights into the fountain and
connecting Dance Dance Revolution pads to allow viewers to control
the fountain with their feet.

Running the fountain isn’t
merely play. Meyer and several fellow students clean and maintain
it. They climb down a ladder into a nearby manhole to reach the
fountain control room, where they’ve battled floods and the
seasonal plague of crab apples that clog the fountain.

At the end
of the day, though, the effort is worth it. “You’re
working on something people see every day,” says Meyer.
“It’s fun because it’s a center­piece of
campus, yet no one realizes it’s student-run.”